Published=Quality?

In 11th grade, I took a class called Fiction Workshop. The teacher, Mr. Labonne,* was full of opinions as to what made a good writer. He praised published authors for their cleverness and turns of phrase. He had no patience for students who tried cleverness and turns of phrase.

According to him, published authors could write however they wanted. If students ever wanted to be published themselves, they had to adhere to Mr. Labonne's rigid standards. Mr. Labonne never said as much, but he made it clear that publication was his One True Measure of a good writer. He also picked on me for disagreeing with him.

I doubt he remembers me. I also doubt he'd be moved that I'm a published author, as well as an editor and first reader. He would be especially displeased how much more experience I have to prove him wrong.

As an author, I'm very aware how certain demographics are more likely to get published than others. It may not be a deliberate bias, but too many publications prefer stories written from the POV of cishet wyt men, and find other work less appealing.

I mentioned in an earlier blog post, I'm a first reader. I don't automatically recommend stories written with Mr. Labonne's preferred writing style, nor do I automatically reject pieces that use different styles. For one, if a magazine chose one school of writing over and over again, reading would get monotonous fast.

For another, there are many other factors that go into selection that Mr. Labonne ignored or barely touched. Voice, pacing, character, plotting, all take precedence for me over his standards. Even then, a story can have decent writing, but I'll still turn it down since we get so many submissions, but a finite budget for paying authors and publication costs.

As an editor, I like variety. I don't want my authors to have similar subject matter or writing styles. This is especially important to me as the writers I worked with are from a variety of countries and cultures. Forcing them all into one mold smells like imperialism. I much preferred asking questions about their stories and helping them get their ideas across to the audience.

In short, despite insisting his ideas on publishing and writing were absolutely correct, Mr. Labonne was wrong. I don't know if he ever moved past his skewed ideas of publishing and how to teach aspiring writers, but I'm glad I didn't take him seriously.

*Name not changed. I'm fine with naming and shaming here.